Chapter 2

New Friends

Year 2024

Thursday

March 30

23:47 hours

North of Cairo, Egypt

Cairo, Egypt

Alpha Team Remnants

Air Force Special Forces

Dragon Skin attack Group

Sergeant Jack Cortez looked back on the events that had passed in the last twelve hours. He had been kicked out of the military, he had broken out of a military hospital, assaulted two soldiers, hijacked three of the Air Force's most advanced fighters, and had nearly got shot down; all because of an explosive crazed hacker, and a pilot who had a friend in Egypt.

So there he was, strapped into the cockpit of a TX-89 Reaper fighter aircraft, looking down at the night life of Cairo in the distance. He looked to the left and to the right, checking to see if Segraves and Benny were still with him. He sighed, thinking of what hell was waiting for him when he got back to the US.

"You still with us Cortez?" asked Lieutenant Segraves. He tapped the left temple of his helmet and his HUD popped up in the visor of his helmet. He tapped it again, and his Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) changed and showed a map. "Hey, guys, we're almost there. I'm going to set a navigation point on your HMD's." He pushed a few buttons on the dashboard of his cockpit and heard a soft beep. He changed the channel on his radio, and said, "Knock, knock Brandon; can we land?"

He heard some rustling on the other end of his channel. "Who is this, and why the hell have you woke me up?" Segraves hesitated for a second, dredging up old memories from highschool, and finally replied, "It's the Eric. You remember, the guy who was dating with your girlfriend in highschool."

"Hey man, didn't recognize your voice for a second." Yep, he remembered, "Remind me to beat your face in, when you land." And the channel went dead for a bit.

"Well, he's in high spirits." Segraves thought to aloud. He could sense that the men in the planes next to him were staring at him. He looked over at Cortez, and said, "Remember guys, when we get on the ground, don't make the guy mad."

"Why?" asked Benny.

"Because the last person to piss him off was a Marine colonel, who wound up with a broken nose, a shattered jaw, a broken cheek bone, and a few missing teeth.

"Oooh, on that note I will make a point to not make him mad." Benny laughed nervously.

The static on the radio ceased, and the voice was back, "Ok, Eric, you guys can land."

All three jets slowed down, lowered their landing gear, and looked toward the ground as a two parallel lines of light lit up on the ground in front of them. They descended toward the cement runway ahead of them. Their tires screeched as they hit the runway. The jets taxied to the hangar doors that were being opened by a man.

As soon as his jet stopped, Cortez hopped out of the cockpit, and stood up, being glad to be on the ground again. He watched as Segraves jumped down from the seat of his jet. He walked up to the man who had opened up the hangar doors. As soon as he was in arm reach, the man brought his closed fist back and sent it flying into the pilot's cheek. Segraves got up, spat out some blood and shrugged off the hit, saying, "I deserved that." He walked up to the man again and shook his hand. He pointed to Cortez and Benny. He led the stranger to them, and introduced him to them, "Guys, meet my good friend Brandon Jenkins.

CIA operative Brandon Ball and his team of two others were about to raid a known terrorist cell's warehouse in western Iran. His fellow operative Jacob Lee had just picked the lock keeping them out of the building. The three agents pulled down their nightvision goggles and silently treaded inside. He tapped his second operative, a blonde named Sara DeMott, on the shoulder. She turned around. He pointed to the nearest corner of the dark warehouse, and drew his finger up the wall. She nodded and crept over to the corner, and expertly started to scale the wall. When she reached the top, she took out a harness, clipped herself to one end, and clipped the other end to a small beam on the roof. She gave her superior officer a thumbs-up. Brandon Ball nodded. He grabbed Jacob Lee's shoulder, got his attention and pointed ahead of them.

For Operative Lee, this was like any other assignment he had ever been given. They were supposed to silently get in, Sara was supposed to give Cover fire (if needed) from the upper corner of the warehouse, take the sleeping terrorists in the warehouse part of the building by surprise, and then proceed to raid the rear part of the building. So far, it had gone flawlessly: he had picked the lock on the front door (with ease), they had entered the warehouse, Sara was in position, and they were about to get the bad guys. Both him and Agent Ball were heading toward the sleeping guys; they just had to turn around this next shelf of AK-47 clips, and –Crash!!—he turned around to see a bunch of ammunition clips at the feet of an embarrassed CIA agent, who said, "I swear I didn't do it!" Just before the lights came one Jacob resorted to his days when he was a cat-burglar, and sprinted to the nearest wall, and climbed up it extremely fast.

Brandon Ball looked up to see all of the lights in the warehouse come alive, and see men with rifles running toward him. "Oh, crap!" he dropped his pistol on the ground. The men started to yell at him in Arabic. "Guys, I don't know what you are saying. Please don't shoot me." One of the men came up to him, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and started to scream questions at him in a language he didn't understand. Brandon said the only reply that came to mind, "No habla Inglés!"

Jacob was watching the mayhem from atop one of the humongous lights in the warehouse. He could feel the heat from the massive bulb wafting up to him. He looked up to the corner and saw that they hadn't found Agent DeMott. He signaled to her, but she only looked up at him and gave him the finger. He looked down and saw the men drag Agent Ball into the back of the warehouse. He stared at the back part of the building, until he got an idea. He keyed his headset and called Agent Demott to come over to his side of the warehouse. He watched her unclip herself from the harness, crawl hand-over-hand on the beams of the roof, and drop onto the platform that supported the light next to him. He showed her the entrance into the posterior of the structure. "That's our way in."

Brandy was looking transfixedly out the barred window of her cell, when she heard her cell door open. Everyone in the small room woke up and looked at the entrance of their prison. Several Arabs carried in a tall, well shaven, blonde man. The man was begging for mercy, and for them not to shoot him. She heard one of the men scream at him in Arabic to shut up. It would have been quite comical, if she wasn't also imprisoned.

Everyone could tell that the man was not from the military by the way he was begging for life. When he was thrown on the ground, he ran toward the gate, which the men had just closed, and started to shake it. Suddenly, realizing that people were staring at him, he turned around. All of the other inhabitants of the cell stared at him. He introduced himself as CIA Operative Brandon Ball. Private Rivera piped up and said disbelievingly, "So you're the guy they sent to rescue us? You've got to be kidding me!" Embarrased, the man sat down in the corner opposite of the others.

Cortez was walking around the "house" of ex-marine Brandon Jenkins. The place was like a small mansion on an air strip, except for the fact that there was a full size armory that contained just about every rifle, machinegun, pistol, rocket launcher, and explosive known to mankind. This guy must be an arms dealer! He walked past a shelf that had several Stinger SAM launchers, and a box labeled "C-6 Plastic High Explosive" Yep, definitely an arms dealer.

Lieutenant Segraves was just walking around the hangar with his old high school buddy Brandon Jenkins. His friend pointed out a brand new F-22 Raptor fighter jet. "This is my pride and joy. I have modified it a bit, I have removed all of the speed and maneuverability inhibitors, up to the point where the G forces will almost crush the human body. Oh, and I put the slick paint job on it also." Segraves looked at the plane and saw that it had, instead of the traditional gray camouflage, blood red camouflage and a maroon skull on the wings and the tail fins. "Nice!" he said.

Benny Hayes was just getting familiar with the roomful of terabyte processing servers. He had already found Jenkins' stockpile of energy drinks. I'm gonna need these, a lot of these. He was searching for the server in Washington, D.C that he wanted. It would take a while, but what are energy drinks for.

When Segraves and Jenkins had finally gotten inside of his house, they found Cortez staring in awe at an interesting rifle. The rifle had a bullpup design, (the magazine is behind the trigger) a 4X scope, infra-red targeting, laser designator, attachable grenade launcher, and a built in camera for shooting around corners. Jenkins walked up to him. Cortez said, "You have an MR-38! These aren't even in production! They're still experimental. How did you get this?"

Jenkins put his hand on Cortez's shoulder, and said, "Most employees will give away many company secrets and prototypes for several million dollars. That's the Black Market for you. I've got several more if you wanted to know." He started to leave the pilot and the soldier, when he turned around and said, "Hey guys, do you want to know where you're sleeping?" The two followed him out of the armory.